‘His good lady?’ sniggered Mischa.

  Selby began packing up her things, trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

  ‘Before you kick him out,’ said Isla, holding her hand up. ‘Can I ask him a question?’ She twisted in her chair to speak to Hamlet. ‘What does forsooth mean?’

  ‘Do you not teach them even basic vocabulary?’ Hamlet asked Ms Karim scathingly.

  ‘It means in truth,’ said Selby. ‘They used to say it a lot. I guess because so many weird things happened that weren’t believable.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just kill your uncle as soon as you found out he had murdered your father?’ asked Max.

  ‘Terminating a man’s existence is not such an easy task,’ said Hamlet. ‘The blow of the sword may not take much strength, but the determination of the mind needed is mighty.’

  ‘You were pretty cold about it when you killed Polonius,’ said Mary.

  ‘Aye, and I thought it my uncle I was slaying,’ said Hamlet. ‘That eased the way for my conscience to strike.’

  ‘He was very confused when he saw the ghost,’ said Selby, remembering the haunted look on Hamlet’s face. ‘He couldn’t be sure that the ghost was real. That it wasn’t a spirit sent by the devil to provoke him into committing an unforgivable crime.’

  ‘But why were you so mean to Ophelia?’ asked Wendy.

  ‘Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind,’ said Hamlet. ‘She will be better off in a nunnery than by my side. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, the hart ungalléd play, for some must watch while some must sleep, thus runs the world away.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Ben.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Selby. ‘He’ll smother you in an avalanche of words. It’s simple, really. He lost his temper because he was angry with Ophelia. He knew the king was listening behind the curtain. He felt betrayed that Ophelia was helping them to set him up.’

  ‘Your analysis of the text has improved,’ Ms Karim complimented Selby. ‘Have you actually read the play at last?’

  ‘Well, no,’ admitted Selby. ‘But it’s not meant to be read. It’s meant to be seen performed live. I’ve seen most of it that way.’

  ‘By hiring a Hamlet impersonator,’ said Ben.

  The class sniggered.

  ‘No,’ said Selby.

  Hamlet took her hand and raised it to his lips.

  ‘I am not a man who can be bought and sold for coin,’ declared Hamlet. ‘I fell in love, as surely as a tree falls under the blade of a sharp axe.’

  ‘Awww,’ said several students.

  ‘Ew,’ said several others.

  ‘One day, I shall take this lady for my wife,’ said Hamlet. ‘Her father has agreed to the match. All that remains is to set a date. A week, a day, would be too long to wait for me.’

  ‘Why is this the only thing you’re decisive about?’ asked Selby.

  ‘My heart beats but one tune,’ said Hamlet. ‘A love song for you.’

  ‘Miss, I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Ben, putting up his hand.

  ‘You’re supposed to be setting aside trivial things, remember,’ Selby told Hamlet, shaking free her hand.

  ‘You are right,’ said Hamlet. ‘It would be unforgivable now for me to take a wife when I have sworn a blood oath to avenge my father.’

  ‘That’s the excuse all the boys use,’ said Deidre. ‘I can’t go out tonight. I’ve got to avenge the death of my father.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Is she mocking me?’ asked Hamlet.

  ‘A little,’ said Selby.

  ‘The youths in this place are a most discourteous rabble,’ said Hamlet. ‘They could all benefit from a thorough thrashing.’

  ‘Arbitrary violence is not the custom here,’ explained Selby. ‘High school is more about verbal and psychological manipulation and intimidation. I think, once you get used to it, you’d fit in well. You are really good at denouncing people.’

  ‘’Tis a princely duty,’ said Hamlet.

  After English was chemistry. Hamlet did much better in that subject. He was so amazed by the Bunsen burner on their desk, he didn’t interrupt the lesson nearly as much. Then middle period was double maths. Hamlet had zero interest in calculus, so he sat quietly and read the books Selby had brought for him.

  She thought Hamlet could do some work on himself, so she had grabbed Who Moved My Cheese?, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before leaving the store that morning. He pored over them conscientiously, ignoring the class talking around him, except to occasionally mutter to Selby, ‘These books have much wisdom’ or, ‘The tutors at Wittenberg University must read this text’.

  At lunchtime, Selby took Hamlet to sit on the far side of the playground, where she shared her sandwich with him.

  ‘The food here tastes so good,’ said Hamlet.

  Selby had never seen someone enjoy a plain ham-on-white-bread sandwich so much. ‘It’s probably the artificial colouring and flavour enhancers in the ham.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Hamlet distractedly as he took another bite. He looked around at the playground. ‘Why are we sitting in lonely isolation? So far off from all the others? Prithee, tell me, is this a punishment for some misdemeanour you’ve committed?’

  ‘I always sit alone at lunch,’ said Selby.

  ‘Ah, much like myself, you have a preference for the solitude of a good book,’ said Hamlet.

  ‘No, I don’t read much. I’m a slow reader,’ said Selby. ‘By the time I figure out the words I lose the sense of what they’re saying.’

  ‘So verily you sit alone, doing nothing? Every day?!’ asked Hamlet.

  ‘I eat my lunch,’ said Selby. ‘And I think about stuff.’

  ‘What of those youths o’er yonder, making sport with that ball?’ asked Hamlet, pointing out half a dozen kids playing handball.

  ‘I’m not any good at handball,’ said Selby. ‘My coordination is pathetic. They wouldn’t want me to play with them.’

  ‘Can you not pursue the accomplishments of a lady?’ asked Hamlet. ‘Embroidery and weaving are fine occupations.’

  ‘People don’t do that anymore,’ said Selby. ‘There are machines that do all that sort of thing very quickly and easily.’

  ‘So each day you come to this school, simply waiting for the day when you may stop coming?’ asked Hamlet.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Selby. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it that way. School is just something you have to do.’

  ‘In Denmark, school is a luxury for the privileged,’ said Hamlet.

  ‘Remember when you said that Denmark was your prison?’ said Selby. ‘Well that’s how school feels for people who aren’t good at it. You have to wait out your thirteen years before they let you go.’

  13

  Something Very Bad

  Selby decided to cut class in the afternoon. It was PE and she didn’t think it was a good idea to let Hamlet get anywhere near the baseball bats, let alone the javelins. So she took him back to the bookstore. Selby knew her parents would be angry she’d cut the last class of the day, but she couldn’t dawdle her way home in case Mrs Tink or some other busybody spotted her. She needn’t have worried. Her parents didn’t even notice that she was home an hour early – they were too busy finishing off the stocktake.

  Selby and Hamlet sat on the stools behind the counter. Hamlet was reading and eating a chocolate bar from the jar on the desk. Selby was doing her biology homework. It was actually very companionable – relaxing even – just hanging out together. Selby was reading about the anatomy of the human ear when the shop bell tinkled. It was Dan.

  ‘My excellent good friend!’ exclaimed Hamlet, looking up from his book. ‘How dost thou, Dan?’

  ‘All good,’ said Dan. He was trying to sound reassuring, but he looked agitated. ‘I just need a quick word with Selby.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamlet. ‘I do not much like her conferring with other men, but as her faithful servant I trust that you can be trusted.’ Turning to Selby, he continued. ‘And trust that my faith will be faithfully upheld.’

  ‘Very clever,’ said Selby, patting his hand as she scooted off the stool to go and talk to Dan. She found him at the far back of the store in the children’s section.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Dan peeked over the top of the shelves to see what Hamlet was doing. He’d gone back to reading his book. He was really enjoying the books from the self-help section.

  Dan sat down in the tiny elephant chair put there to keep young readers happy while their parents browsed. Selby took a seat on a tiny lion.

  ‘We’ve got to put him back,’ whispered Dan.

  ‘What?’ said Selby.

  ‘Hamlet,’ said Dan. ‘He’s got to go back into the play.’

  ‘But he’s just starting to settle in,’ said Selby.

  ‘Really?’ said Dan. He leaned back on his elephant seat so he could see around the side of a bookcase.

  Hamlet was peering intently at the barcode scanner attached to the register. He accidentally scanned his own face and flinched.

  ‘He’s got an enquiring mind,’ said Selby.

  ‘You’ve gotten attached, haven’t you?’ accused Dan. ‘He’s not a puppy. You don’t get to just keep him because he followed you home from school and he’s cute.’

  ‘The whole reason we took him out of the play was to prevent a bloodbath,’ said Selby. ‘He’s not causing any trouble here. He might denounce people more than is polite but, so long as he doesn’t get his hands on another sword, he’ll be fine.’

  ‘He might be fine,’ said Dan. ‘But his being here is destroying the entire Western canon of literature.’

  ‘The what of what?’ said Selby.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Dan. He got up and led Selby over to the classics section. ‘Look, here’s a copy of Hamlet.’ Dan picked up the play and showed Selby the cover.

  ‘So?’ said Selby.

  ‘Look inside,’ said Dan. He started flicking through. Everything looked normal.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ asked Selby.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said Dan. ‘These are the first two acts. But here . . .’ Dan stopped when the pages suddenly went blank. ‘This is where we took him out of the play. From this point on, the rest of the play is blank.’

  Selby took the book out of Dan’s hands and had a look for herself. It was weird. The first half was a perfectly normal book. The second half was entirely blank, except for the page numbers at the bottom.

  Dan picked up another copy from the shelf and showed it to her. ‘They’re all the same.’

  ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said Selby. ‘But it’s worth it. To save – what was it? Eight lives?’

  ‘Eight fictional lives,’ said Dan.

  ‘They were real in that world,’ argued Selby.

  ‘It gets worse,’ said Dan. ‘Because Hamlet is a pivotal work in the evolution of English literature.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Selby.

  ‘That one play influenced so many other books and plays,’ said Dan. He grabbed another book from the shelf. ‘You’ve heard of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ said Selby. ‘It’s a classic. There’s a TV version.’

  Dan rolled his eyes, ‘Yes, well there was, but there probably isn’t now. Look at this.’

  He flicked through the book – it was entirely empty. ‘Because Hamlet has gone, so has Great Expectations. It was inspired by Hamlet. And it doesn’t end there. Hamlet influenced Hermin Melville, so that’s Moby Dick gone. And William Faulkner, who wrote The Sound and the Fury, Adolph Huxley and Brave New World.

  ‘That’s half the classics section!’ said Selby. She may not have read them, but you can’t grow up in a bookshop and not know those books.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dan. ‘And once all those books have gone, then so have all the books they influenced. It’s like a giant sinkhole has opened up in the history of literature and books are just disappearing into oblivion.’

  ‘Okay, that’s bad,’ said Selby.

  ‘Then there are all the words and expressions invented by Shakespeare and first used in Hamlet. “To thine own self be true”, “neither a borrower nor a lender be”, “to sleep, perchance to dream”, “brevity is the soul of wit”, “the lady doth protest too much”, “conscience doth make cowards of us all”, “I must be cruel only to be kind”. That’s all gone.’

  ‘But still,’ said Selby. ‘The deaths.’

  ‘They are fictional,’ said Dan. ‘We can’t confuse real life and fantasy.’

  ‘This from the guy who plays Dungeons and Dragons every weekend,’ said Selby.

  ‘We have to let their story play out,’ said Dan, ‘because, in the world of books, Hamlet is one of the most important stories ever told. And books are important. The advance of ideas and literary expression is how civilisation evolves. To keep Hamlet here would be devolutionary!’

  ‘Oh, please. Melodramatic much?’ said Selby.

  ‘Yes, yes I am!’ said Dan. ‘Because you don’t get it. You live here in a building surrounded by books, but you can’t see how important they are. You can’t see the wood for the trees. Books are time capsules of ideas. They are how knowledge and wisdom and art are transferred through time. They are important. We can’t vandalise that.’

  Selby stared at the floor, trying to wrap her mind around all this. It was a lot. She could see that Dan was right. But she also knew, instinctively, that it was utterly wrong to allow people to just die. She didn’t buy Dan’s argument that they were fictional so it was okay. It didn’t feel okay.

  She looked across at Hamlet, talking to her mother. Her mother was laughing, but she looked a little nervous too. Hamlet was no doubt saying something clever with three different veiled meanings. Apart from anything else, if she put him back in the play, she would miss him.

  Selby had been such a pale excuse for a human being. Like a watercolour painting, transparent in places, in others no colour there at all. She’d gone unnoticed for so long – it had been fun to hang out with someone utterly brash, and confident and even loudly abusive. She couldn’t conceive of behaving that way herself, but it had been fun to watch someone else doing it. Hamlet was so flawed. And his ideas were totally messed up. But she admired his bravery. Even his indecision and what he considered his own cowardice, it was really just a determination to be sure.

  She had to do the right thing, but she would do it on her own terms.

  ‘I’ll put him back,’ said Selby. ‘But I’m not going to let them all die. I’ll do it, but only if I can get Ophelia out first.’

  ‘That would change the narrative,’ said Dan.

  ‘Good!’ said Selby. ‘The narrative sucks.’

  Dan winced.

  ‘Did you just wince because I said “sucks”, or because I criticised Shakespeare’s plotting?’ asked Selby.

  ‘A little bit of both,’ said Dan.

  ‘Look, taking Ophelia out wouldn’t change it much,’ said Selby. ‘She doesn’t directly influence any of the plot once she’s dead. So if, instead of dying, she disappeared – then it wouldn’t affect the rest of the plot at all.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Dan, running the rest of the play through in his mind. ‘That should work. It would be easy enough for her to simply disappear down by the river, instead of drowning.’

  ‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ said Selby. ‘I’ll go back in and get Ophelia out. You mind Hamlet. Then once she’s out, he can go back in and the story can play out.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Dan. He took out the copy of Hamlet and found the right page for her. He glanced at the text himself, then looked up at Selby. ‘Be careful. At this point where you’re going back into in the play – it’s very sad. Ophelia is devasted by her father’s death.’

  He held out the book to Selby. She knew this was going to be hard, but there was no avoiding it. Selby took it and started reading out loud, but soon, the voice in her ears was Ophelia’s . . .

  OPHELIA

  I hope all will be well.

  We must be patient,

  but I cannot choose but weep,

  to think they would lay him i’th’ cold ground.

  My brother shall know of it,

  and so I thank you for your good counsel.

  Come, my coach.

  Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,

  good night, good night.

  14

  Helping Ophelia

  Selby tumbled out through the wall and landed with a thump in the gardens of Castle Elsinore. She hadn’t been out here before. It was beautiful. She was surrounded by ornamental flower beds and espaliered fruit trees, all in blossom, lining the wall she had just fallen through. A movement caught her eye. It was Ophelia. She was carrying a basket as she disappeared into the woods beyond the formal gardens. Selby hurried after her.

  Selby wasn’t too worried about losing sight of Ophelia, because she could hear her singing. It was eerie – the singing of someone so devastated they had emotionally checked out. Selby walked deeper and deeper into the forest, following the sound. The undergrowth was thick. She only caught occasional glimpses of Ophelia’s pale pink dress as she moved through the forest.

  The path was winding downwards. Pretty soon, Selby could hear the babble of moving water. They were getting close to the river. Selby hurried her pace. She wanted to get to the riverbank before Ophelia could do anything. The undergrowth was lush and thicker here. She couldn’t see Ophelia up ahead at all. She couldn’t hear the singing either. It was making Selby nervous.

  Suddenly – there was a loud SPLASH!

  Selby knew immediately – this was bad. Adrenalin kicked in. She gave up following the path and crashed straight through the undergrowth towards the sound of the river.

  As she broke through, Selby almost stumbled into the water where the bank dropped away steeply. It was a large, fast-moving river. Selby saw Ophelia’s basket float past. Flowers were scattered on the top of the water. The blooms were just starting to become waterlogged and sink. It was a chilling sight. Selby looked upstream along the bank. She could see Ophelia fifty metres away. The distraught girl was wading out into the water. Her long skirt was already totally drenched. Ophelia was reaching for a flower that hung from a branch above.